Building Iphone Apps My Way!!! :) Pt. 01

Image by ecerverab via Flickr

For the last year or so I have become a bit fascinated by the myriad of tools available for building mobile apps. Particularly tools using the very promising HTML5/javascript/CSS3 combination with access to native functionality like accelerometer and camera built in. All part of my grand mobile dream of write once, run anywhere with near native access to phone functionality.

I have built projects and experiments using many of these tools, Rhodes, Titanium, phonegap, GameSalad, to name a few. Yet I was stunned that none of those fit the bill for this latest project which a friend and I have been kicking around for months now; an in-the-wild personal foreign language digital assistant designed specifically for the traveler who is intrigued by the local ladies but not so well versed in the local language!!! Great idea right?? You bet your ass it is. :)  That is why selection of the proper toolkit is crucial to its success.

Our Requirements in brief:

• App compiled to  Binary code
• Fast
• In-App purchase Enabled
  
• iAdd style adverts Enabled
• Sexy interface that works well on, at least, iphone and Android
  

 I have used rhomobile before. I deployed to the android store an app promoting chalkboard, a geospecific advertising service built by some friends in Singapore. While I found that it had a rich enough feature set to do the job; and I actually like writing ruby code in a rails-like environment,  I found the following drawbacks:

1. The UI was less than attractive, downright boring even. In fact the most visually interesting bit of my app, the twitter client,  ended up  finally being written in javascript and took about 1/10th as long as figuring out how to code up the same thing in Ruby and Rhodes.
   
2. The load time was horrendously slow. Even after I performed every code optimization trick I could find on forums and videos I still found load times to be about 2-2.5 times  slower than
   
3. Their developer model has changed. I must admit it is a bit confusing and I have not quite figured out if I have to pay more money or not.
   
4. It lacked the hooks for iADS and In-App PURCHASE. Deal-breaker for us more capitalist developers.
   
5. The service did not offer the lightning fast remote end-around-apple-approval-process updates which are a major selling point of javascript and HTML5 based dev tools. Bad. 

Thus I moved on to titanium. But alas even though it did fare much better on points one and 2; I didn't have the confusion about where I stood as a developer (pt 3); its plans to address points 4 and 5 are not yet realized. Points 4 & 5 also put the freeze on any aspirations I had to use the open source utility phonegap.

Enter Appmobi, html5 and javascript, compiles into a native binary that is fully equipped with in-App purchase and iAd style advertising. We here at the Lab were overjoyed, and proceeded to put it through it's paces!!!

To be continued. . .

Related articles

• People of HTML5 - Remy Sharp (hacks.mozilla.org)
• 18 Mobile Frameworks and Development Tools for Creating iPhone Apps (iphoneized.com)
• PhoneGap Build: Cross-Platform Mobile App Creation Using Web Technology (readwriteweb.com)

Chris Cotton

Applications Developer for Mobile and Web

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The Seraph And The Dangers of Manifestation

Jeremy was a sad seraph. Sad because he had blown through the manifestation time lag. and believe me folks, transcendental space and time was taking its toll.

Now he could think of anything and it would manifest it on the spot effortlessly and with no delay. He was not quite sure how it

Image via Wikipedia

had happened. But one day while singing a creation song with rapt and heartfelt glee. Visions began to flood his mind. His nimbus sparked in flashes and flurries like pale moonlight dancing on a clear morning brook. He felt something tear in the fabric of time, tear a way that could be felt in remote galaxies light years beyond the sun. We think he just got carried away. After all, the feeling was like becoming starfire, a zillion simultaneous orgiastic bursts of creation.

Then suddenly words, ancient words, sung in a language at least a millenia older, and and thus even more dead than even the dead sea scrolls; began to roll off his lips and manifest. Immediately and completely they became flesh and bone and blood; soil and wing, beak feather and sinew.

They began falling from his mouth and mind like raindrops freezing midway through their descent. They writhed on the ground and stood on four or two or even one leg.

They flew or hopped or rolled around screeching and moaning with all joy, the fear, and the honest trepidation one is wont to feel when standing in the presence of their creator.

He had to put a stop to it. the room was beginning to fill up with beings both light and dark. Some began to pray. Others to preach, heal, and fight with great passion for the rights and protection of the poor and the sick. A small few even began to organize into armies, fashion crude weapons,  and plot large scale and bloody battles designed to exterminate those who they identified as being their enemies. Many began to dance, drink wine and engage in ecstatic orgies around gigantic  bonfires raging passionately into the night sky.

He closed his shining eyes and cleared his mind by focusing on a tiny ball of light hovering and pulsating in the aether, and in the teaming blackness just behind his eyelids. His focus was sufficient to halt the flood. His task now was to hold that neutral state until he could repair the damage done.

The problem was that he needed help. And whatever damage he had done affected matter and anti-matter to such a degree as to render useless his cries for help to any of his peers.

It was quite a dilemma.

He found a piano. Carefully he shifted his focus just enough to tune the piano to perfection with his thoughts but not so much as to wander and restart the raging river of random thoughts becoming things. His piano now tuned, he began to play and play.

His music filled the cosmos. Its' feel was seductive and epic. its' glorious melody, equal parts dirge and hymn, caused a cloudy silver-white ball of charged eather to emanate from the piano; rise into the atmosphere, Only to slowly expand and evanesce.  The room fell away, the land fell away

And from the ashes at the edge of evanescence another seraph, kindred and compassionate, heard his cry. Summoning her ability to ability to bend space and time to quickly navigate the treacherous tear in existence,  she struggled against the chaos to manifest in the hopes of helping her brother repair the damage. . .

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